60

Logic II 53

I believe that the answer is that, like any other regeneration,
the instamorphosis was is commonly sudden, though
sometimes slow. When it is sudden, what is it that of an
constitutes the transformation? It is their being served
with a great desire to learn the true, and their going
to work with all their might in by a well-considered
method to gratify that desire. The man who is working in
the right way to learn something not already known
is recognized by all men of science as one of themselves,
no matter how little he is informed. It would be monstrous
to say that Ptolemy, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and Posidonius,
were not scientific men because their knowledge was
comparatively small. The life of science is in the desire
to learn. If this desire is not pure, but is mingled with
a desire to prove the truth of a definite opinion, or of
a general mode of conceiving of things, it will be apt
almost inevitably lead to the adoption of a faulty